WWJD – What would Jesus do? Most people are familiar with the popular Evangelical movement that sprang up in the ‘90s, inviting people to ask this question about daily life decisions. Many people are aware that this movement was rooted in Charles Sheldon’s best-selling novel, “In His Steps,” written in 1896, featuring a minster who encourages parishioners to ask this question throughout their daily lives for a year. What many may not be aware of is the event that transformed Sheldon life and led him to write the book.

How could your local church better help people connect the worlds of faith and work? Are their things being done in your congregation, or in other congregations, that we all might learn from? What obstacles do you see in having the courageous conversations Knapp describes? What thoughts do you have about how we might create congregations with a more inclusive narrative? This being the last post, what do you make of Knapp’s thesis for this book?

Knapp explains that Charles Sheldon was minister in Topeka, KS, in 1889. He wanted to make his ministry relevant to the everyday lives of his parishioners. He asked to be relieved of all but his preaching duties for twelve weeks. He spent those twelve weeks going to every part of town to learn how people lived and made a living. He spent a week as a homeless person looking for work. He hung out with streetcar workers on the job. He attended classes at the local college. He spent time in the African-American part of town. He lived with railroad workers, firemen, brakemen, switchmen, yardmen, and engineers. He spent time with lawyers and doctors. He spent time with businessmen in real estate, accounting, dry goods, hardware, and other fields. He ran a printing press.

Sheldon credited this experience with helping him to see the reality of his parishioners and it made him better able to preach and minister to his congregation. And I love this story Knapp tells:

“Lest we underestimate the impact of Sheldon’s project, consider this. Upon learning that black children were woefully behind their white peers in academic achievement, partly because many of their mothers worked during the day to help support their families, Sheldon set out to establish the first African-American kindergarten west of the Mississippi to provide early-childhood care and better education. Among its graduates was Elisha Scott, who went on to law school with Sheldon’s help and later gave the name Charles Sheldon Scott to his son, a future lawyer who in 1954 successfully argued the Brown vs. Board of Education case before the United States Supreme Court, effectively ending school segregation in America.” (149)

[Note: Sheldon’s 1890, Andover Review article, “Practical Sociological Studies,” the source of Knapp’s discussion, can be found here. On a related note, I recommend Alain de Botton’s, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, (a philosophical rather than theological work), a travelogue through several modern professions that is both humorous and moving.]

Knapp is not suggesting that each minister needs to take a similar three month sabbatical but he does suggest that pastors make an effort to get into the workplace and talk to people about their work lives. For several years I’ve sensed that until people see a profound connection between their daily work and God’s Kingdom, the church will always be something supplemental to “real life.” I strongly identify with Knapp’s speculation that, “A serious emphasis on faith at work may actually be a catalyst for the church’s larger mission.” (150) So where should the church begin?

Knapp points us back to earlier chapters. We need for churches to think about how they can enliven the moral dimensions he highlighted in Chapter 6: Moral discernment, moral discourse, moral influence, moral encouragement, and moral example. But beyond that, he points us to four essentials to consider.

Collaborative Leadership

“We have seen what lay leaders can accomplish by pouring their energies into ministries outside their own churches. If the culture of the institution is to change, lay leadership will be indispensable in helping the clergy rethink some of the timeworn ecclesiastical assumptions about the priorities of ministry. … The credibility and insights of lay leadership in faith-at-work ministries cannot be underestimated.” (150-151)

Courageous Conversations

We need space for conversations we all know need to happen but are not happening. The church doesn’t talk about vocation, business, or money. These conversations are going to make pastors and businesspeople alike uncomfortable. Included in these conversations will be how people handle their own money as well as how the church handles its own business practices.

Once the church begins to learn how to handle the internal dialog, it will need to engage the community. Knapp lifts up Redeemer Presbyterian Church’s (in New York City) Center for Faith and Work as one model. The Center offers forums for dialog on a being a Christian in a variety of industries. Through their Gotham Fellowship, they offer a nine-month training program helping young-adults integrate work and life in a variety of fields.

Relevant Worship

The images, rituals, and language of worship are disconnected from the reality of work life. We (and particularly pastors) have to be intentional about tearing down the dualities that we have created between work and worship. Knapp reminds us about the possibility of commissioning services. Sermons, prayers, and hymns that incorporate an integrated perspective need to be brought into worship.

A More Inclusive Narrative

What is the church’s narrative of itself? Visit a congregation’s website. You will find pictures of people in worship, attending bible studies, youth groups, mission trips, pastors, and possibly a mission worker or two. What you will not find is pictures of people at work!

Personally, I think folks should do as I did (though not on purpose) and read the “King Jesus Gospel” and Knapp’s book together. Our work is a central expression of living as citizens of the Kingdom of God.

Finally at the closing of the book he writes about young adults:

“… for the millennials are far less willing than their predescessors to divide their lives into two worlds. “Many millennials see their careers and personal life as one,” writes Ron Alsop in his book The Trophy Kids Grow Up. “They don’t talk about balancing work and life but rather about blending them.” (155)

Curiously, the failure of congregations and denominations to nurture integrated lives may lead not only to fragmented lives but also to the demise of the very structures that have ignored this reality.

Concluding Thoughts

Because of my work in the hierarchy of the PCUSA I have been a party to many conversations about the status of the church (the PCUSA being one expression) in our culture and the church’s future. If there is one thing I keep coming back to it is the presence of two disconnects.

First is the disconnect people feel between their daily lives and the mission of God. Knapp has focused on businesspeople. While most of us may not be businesspeople with a capital “B,” most of us do work in business settings where integration of work with faith is a challenge. Knapp’s concerns and suggested responses can be pressed in other vocational directions as well.

Second is the disconnect in the institutions of the church about the work and faith disconnection! Knapp nails it with this quote I included in the previous post.

“Diehl, Hammond, Butt, and others like them erected a platform of ideas that has allowed a multifaceted movement to thrive through the initiative and leadership of laypeople. The institutional church, meanwhile, has been less than enthusiastic about these ideas, preferring to redefine lay ministry as more active involvement in existing church programs. ‘Whether church professionals never fully absorbed that, by definition, the location of lay ministry was extrinsic to the gathered church or whether they were threatened by a loss of power and control is open to debate,’ writes [David] Miller.” (125)

My experience is that when I share my concerns about lack of integration in our daily lives with working people I frequently see a hunger to learn more. There is an eruption of both excitement and frustration. When I talk with church professionals, I have the sense that I might as well be speaking Martian. Sometimes there is a head nod toward the issue. Sometimes there is patient listening. But in the end, the critical issues on the agenda are how to improve the worship service, the youth programs, sharing of faith stories, summer mission trips, compassionate ministries, and justice advocacy efforts. Surely if we just did these things better, more people would come.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying there is no merit to wrestling with these programmatic issues. There is. I’m saying that focusing on these issues to the exclusion of nurturing people to live integrated lives as citizens of God’s Kingdom is pure folly. The image of a failing car company obsessing over body design, airbag safety, and suspension systems for vehicles that have no engines pops into mind. Until this changes, the steady stream of people out the back door of our churches into the ranks of the “religious but unchurched” will not stem and young adults will at best see the church as interesting anachronism.

I’m hitting the institutional church pretty hard. I don’t want to be unfair. I do see a pastor here and there in my own PCUSA tribe who is deeply wrestling with this stuff. I encounter an occasional denominational official who gets these issues. They span a range of political and theological leanings. I’m personally grateful to have a pastor who is tuned into these issues, who is deeply rethinking what his role is, and continues to gently nudge our congregation in new ways of thinking and being. I don’t think it is fair to paint a monolithic picture of despair among my tribe or the tribes of others, but the challenges are big.

I will offer one last concern. I’m all for para-church organizations. They play an indispensable role. Still, worshiping communities are an essential expression of the Kingdom of God. A central feature of baptism is making a visible identification with the community that God has gathered to give witness to his Kingdom.

I’m uneasy with how disconnected some expressions of the faith at work movement are from worshiping communities. There is a danger of setting up yet another dualism. We can end up having a para-church community of like-minded people for support at work, and a worshiping community that supplies us with a range of religiosity goods. That conveniently insulates our like-minded community from having to reflect on challenges that those outside our community might raise, while freeing us from the honest conversations that need to be had so that people within the worshiping community may learn from us. It becomes just one more exercise in compartmentalization. Knapp has pointed us in some directions of first steps for finding coherence, not just as individuals, but for the church. We will need winsome advocates from the business community who will actively engage in the patient work of reintegration in the institutional church, even as they are open to being transformed by God through the church.

There you have it. If you haven’t bought the book, now would be a good time. 😉 My thanks to Scot for making Jesus Creed available for this discussion. My thanks to John Knapp for having written such an important conversation starter. And thanks to all of you for conversation throughout this series.

Nice work, Michael. Thanks for this entry and all the related ones. Your writing is both elegant, easy to digest, and thought-provoking.

Kyle

Ha. “Both” started as two and then morphed into three compliments. You’re worthy of all three even if I did forget to proofread!

RJS

Michael,

This has been a thought-provoking series, even when I disagree with a focus. Thanks for linking the Redeemer Center for Faith and Work – this led me into a number of very interesting things.

The key really is faith and work, not just faith and business people.

Nice series.

Nate

Michael,

Thanks for this good series. You inspired me to buy the book. The disconnect between church and life is profound and deep. I’m waiting for the day when a sermon about spiritual gifts helps people wrestle with how these gifts can be applied in daily life. Too often people are encouraged to discover their gifts and then are pressured to volunteer in church programs.

RJS

Nate,

But “church programs” are not all bad by any means. Many if not most serve an important purpose for the global church. After all, the Redeemer Presbyterian center Michael links is a church program.

The solution isn’t to eliminate church community.

Of course a sermon about the application of spiritual gifts in daily life is really the point. Church programs are only a small part of daily life.

Nate

RJS,

I agree completely that church programs are important. As a former pastor I know first hand that they are needed. And I’ve seen many parents who give of their time more sacrificially to sports programs than to church programs. I think it is important for churches to call their people to engage in church programs and ministries. My point is simply that too often that is the only emphasis we hear about from church.

This is a massive shift (as Michael alluded to) and will require pastors to do more listening and less “telling as the expert.” It will also require everyone to take their daily faith more seriously. Some will embrace this shift, some will not. But I believe it more fully reflects the King Jesus Gospel.

Randy Gabrielse

One thought on this is a comment by Dave Clark of Christian in Community Development Association a week ago. He read Jeremiah’s letter to the exiles in chapter 29. He noted that verse 7 say ” Also seek the peace and prosperity of the city of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”

David suggested that we North Americans tend automatically to read this as “If you prosper the city around you will prosper,” and that too many of us in the church are too busy trying to prosper oursevles, with some notion of helping others from our wealth, to have time to seek the prosperity of our neighbors and fellow residents first.

I don’t see this as soley a problem regarding business people, but in the church as a whole.

Stan Ott at the Vital Churches Institute talks about the need for a three dimensional church. He uses a vin diagram with the three spheres being doxological, koinanial, and missional (and, no, I’m not sure these are real words but work with me here.) More simply, worship, community, and missional. It is impossible to authentically exhibit any one of these without the other two.

Nate, sometimes congregations will do spiritual gift inventories. No problem there. But rather than asking how the congregation can participate in equipping people for mission and work in the world (and that need not exclude work that happens inside the four walls of church), the inventory is used for determining how to fill vacant slots in church committees and programs. If that is the kind of thing you are getting at, then I couldn’t agree more!

And if I hear RJS right, I think she is expressing a concern that we might interpret everything as “missional.” I share concern about that imbalance. Community and mission aren’t oppositional options but rather integral expressions of a 3-D church.

And RJS:

“The key really is faith and work, not just faith and business people.”

Yes! And that really is my larger concern. Knapp has focused on businesspeople and I have been weaving in and out of that narrower discussion. But even for those of us not directly in the business end of things, if we are earning an income we in the business world to one degree or another. So I hope the series has been meaningful even for those not in business.

Paul

Michael,

Thanks for this series, I too have been pushed to helpful thoughts as a result of this.

In my own life as a teacher of Bible/Geography in a Christian school I often struggle with how to view my own job as part of God’s mission in this world…I sometimes feel as though it would be better to work in a less Christian work environment (as though this would be more “missional”). This series has been helpful as I seek to relate work/faith to my students and as I view my own work/faith coming together. Thanks.

John

Enjoyed the series. Thank you.

As long as we understand “church” as a “place” where “clergy” maintains a duality with “laity” – I doubt we’ll ever find a harmony of faith and work. If our models of ecclesia are fundamentally imbalanced (as I believe they are), where will we find examples in which our spirituality is balanced with our work?

Wyatt

Paul,

Get out here and join the rest of us in the world and learn how to really live out your faith and work and pray. Church work is over-sold and too often doesn’t deliver. Staying behind the walls of the Christian fortress makes you think you are doing something. But really, are you?

The Rule of St. Benedict lives. “Ora et labora”. Pray and work. Why seek balance? Seek life and the rest will follow.

At the end of the movie “Annie Hall,” Woodie Allen says he went to sees his psychiatrist. He told him, “Doc, you gotta help me. I have this friend who thinks he is a chicken.” The doctor asks Allen if he has told his friend he isn’t a chicken. Allen’s reply is, “No. I need the eggs.”

The dualities we inhabit create considerable co-dependency. Escaping them is going to mean trauma for both “clergy” and “laity.” Our chicken and eggs arrangement is often quite cozy. I suspect change will have to come with incremental (but intentional) changes that start with a few folks and then builds in numbers and momentum over time (years, that is). I think we are often too impatient with change and that is why there has been such a strong tendency to address faith and work matters from outside the church institutions rather than from within it.

BTW, thanks for all the affirming comments. It has been my pleasure to do these posts. I always learn so much in the process.

John

#12 – “I suspect change will have to come with incremental (but intentional) changes that start with a few folks and then builds in numbers and momentum over time (years, that is). I think we are often too impatient with change…”

Agreed. This is a “long now” class of structural change – it takes many generations. The kind of changes worth investing in are often this type. Related to that, some of us are crazy enough to be building a 10,000 year clock inside of a mountain.

RJS

John,

What’s crazy about building a 10K year clock inside a mountain? Where else would you build it?

The solution to this disconnect expressed above was for me found in the book “With: Reimagining the Way You Relate to God” by Skye Jethani. This was one of the most life changing books I have read in years with respect to my relationship “with” the Almighty and how that transcends and informs my entire life, including being CEO of a corporation that has to deal with some pretty ugly stuff sometimes (we specialize in working with churches, so you can imagine). Comments?